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... he IS popular and hopefully is introducing more people into classical music.
I just attempted to look at a video of him playing Liszt in London but -
* the fake rapturous look on the dial
* the mangling of the tempos
* the ....
Oh what the hell. If people like it, go for it!!!
John
Enjoying over 9000 mostly classical CDs via Sennheiser HD800 headphones & a NuForce DAC9 on a Meridian Sooloos system.
The main 7.1 MC electrostatic speaker system is enjoyed at night for A/V
Follow Ups:
received tomatoes from these "purists."
that not only is Lang Lang Chinese, so is much of his audience and some of the most popular pieces in his repertoire. I've not been there, but from what I've read, heard and seen, it is a very different culture, with very different tastes in music, even in how Western or Western-influenced music should sound.
It may be too simplistic to evaluate Lang Lang solely based on European traditions and values most of us take as given.
No question about his ability to hit the ivories - the problem is both the tragic expressions on his face as he does this and the resultant music interpretation does not appeal to me. I'm no music expert or professional critic but his tempos etc are so vastly different to what others use I feel; his artistic licence is ending up as inartistic for showmanship purposes.
But it is paying him handsomely - audiences love him,. Fair enough, those that like his playing can attend while the rest of us stay at home and listen to Brendel and others. BTW the video I've been attempting to view & listen was taken off TV so I'm not guilty of directly contributing to Bang Bang wealth!
John
Enjoying over 9000 mostly classical CDs via Sennheiser HD800 headphones & a NuForce DAC9 on a Meridian Sooloos system.
The main 7.1 MC electrostatic speaker system is enjoyed at night for A/V
.
You don't see that every day!
Cliche to a fault. He actually has played some things very well.
I heard Lang Lang play a precise, elegant, and restrained Mozart piano concerto and an over-the-top, bombastic Chopin Polonaise in the same concert. Guess which performance the audience just loved. It wasn't the Mozart.
the audience is free to love whatever they want to love. Here is my observation though. When Richter did interpretations that were off the beaten path and IMO highly questionable he is a great artist expanding the boundaries. When Gould came up with some really weird interpretations of certain works he was an eccentric artist. When Lang Lang does anything he is bang bang.
I'm not saying he hasn't deserved some of the criticism. But IMO it has reached a point with many that it no longer matters what he does. he will always be bang bang.
I once pulled a dirty trick on someone who loves Martha Argerich and hates Lang Lang......... On the classical station, he overheard a long time favorite Argerich performance of Prokofiev's 7th Sonata, but he missed the announcement and beginning of the piece, and didn't know it was Argerich. He asked me during the performance who was playing, and I said "Lang Lang"....... After it ended, he immediately told me it was the "worst piece of crap" he's ever heard. Then the radio announcer mentions the piece and Argerich's name. I swear to God, the guy wanted to kill me...........
And there you have it. Great story.
tomorrow and many of those who claim to not like his playing would still not like it. I watched the video of him in Barenboim's master class learning a Beethoven sonata. Superegos don't act that way. He was even working with a score! He had not memorized it yet.
So what does this video say about the soul behind the performance?
Words like "repulsive" come to mind.
It says nothing about it. Horse and cart. Got em backwards.
/
If a guy wants to make a fast buck, I don't care how he does it.
But don't you think a musician's sense of values has a nasty habit of sneaking into his playing? I guess not.
nt
A matinee concert of NY Philharmonic, conducted by Eschenbach. On the program, Bruckner 9 -- my wife's favorite piece of music.The hall was filled with blue haired ladies, some with even older escorts, and herds of young people of Asian heritage.
The unfortunate part was having to sit through Bang Bang flailing, swooning, rapturing,swaying, emoting through Beethoven's 1st piano concerto. I first tried to keep my eyes closed in order to keep from bursting out laughing at his antics. But in so doing, it nauseated me, because of the tortured performance. I finally settled on watching the lovely Cynthia Phelps, principal viola, Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster, and Carter Brey, principal cello -- using my hand beside my face to block my vision of Bang Bang.
The blue haired ladies adored him. The Asian-heritage young people adored him. I applauded in celebration that it was over.
BTW -- the Bruckner was *splendid*!! The orchestra was expanded in almost every section, a huge number of musicians on stage. The massive sound filled Avery Fischer Hall as I had never heard before. The tempos were excellent. My wife cried.
As soon as the last note was played, what remained of the audience (there was a mass exodus at intermission, the crowd having heard Bang Bang and left) rushed for the exits. Little blue haired ladies and their aged escorts trampling each other to escape (or perhaps to try to get to the restrooms). Some of us remained to applaud the outstanding performance of Bruckner 9.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Edits: 07/06/12 07/06/12
My wife lumps him in with Berlioz in the "blaring brass" category, and so, consequently, can't stand his symphonies at all (although she DOES like his choral music for some reason - no blaring brass, I guess!). ;-)
She likes the 7th and 8th as well. Not so much the earlier symphonies.She once commented, if Jimi Hendrix had been a classical composer in the 1800s, he would have composed music like the Scherzo of Bruckner 9.
Celibidache's Bruckner is a curiosity. I liked hearing his interpretations, because they were so slow and dragged out that:
(1) you could hear a lot of the inner workings of the symphony.
(2) the musicians must have trained for years to play at the slug-like pace imposed by Celibidache. What a testament to endurance and control.
That said, twice was all I could stand of it -- which is how I feel about 90% of Celibidache's Munich recordings. It was almost like a novelty act. I think I have never heard anything as dreadful as Celibidache's Sheherazade. I could just picture Rimsky-Korsakov jumping up on stage, giving Celibidache a sound kick in the butt, and yelling "Get on with it, man!"
My wife is "take it or leave it" with Berlioz, but likes a good performance of Symphony fantastique well enough.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Edits: 07/08/12 07/08/12
"(1) you could hear a lot of the inner workings of the symphony."
To me, this is a major element of what distinguishes a good Bruckner performance from the rest.............
If Bruckner had intended the 2nd movement of his 9th to be played at an adagio tempo, he would have designated it as an adagio rather than a scherzo. It's interesting to hear the part play of the trio, but the it is the uptempo pace of the trio that makes it so wonderfully different.
For me, it's like looking at a clear model of a high performance engine so I can see how all the parts work. But it is the experience of riding in it at the intended speed that gets the blood up!
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
"My wife lumps him in with Berlioz in the 'blaring brass' category, and so, consequently, can't stand his symphonies at all"Of all the composers I've taken a liking to, Bruckner may have had the longest learning curve of all...... With a LOT of frustration along that journey. (At times, I almost gave up on this composer.) But I think I was fortunate to hear a few performances that made me realize that Bruckner was a lot more than what I once thought was merely "practice drills for orchestra"..........
I once had a total misunderstanding of Bruckner........ At first I thought "volume in the brass" was what this composer was all about...... Until maybe a year ago, discovering Sergiu Celibidache and came to the realization that melodic lyricism is what makes this composer interesting....... Dynamic control throughout the entire orchestra enables the intoxicating harmonic flavors to be heard, along with the main melodies, helping the listener better understand the composer's intentions........ When those harmonic flavors are heard and played in a lyrical manner, the music takes on a totally different character.
And often "blaring brass", which initially sounds impressive with Bruckner, is the most common failing in regard to obscuring these intoxicating harmonies. (In such cases, the music becomes "monotone" in character. The very Bruckner that strikes people cold.) The brass dynamics must be in control for this music to sing. Loud is OK, but as long as the sections are balanced and dynamics are disciplined.
Another common failing with Bruckner is loss of sustained melodic/harmonic lines, which can also obscure the harmonic palette. The musicians need to play with a lot of discipline. The music done well often takes on the character of a "solemn religious hymn"- The brass almost sounds like a pipe organ, the strings almost sound like a "choir".
Only few conductors do it for me with Bruckner....... My three favorites are Celibidache, Gunter Wand, and Herbert Blomstedt.
Edits: 07/06/12
I've got a Bruk 4th I like, but most I've heard is SO 4-square, a phrase, repeat, and so on , it's predictable and boring.
I remember one thing that so impressed me when I saw Celibidache and the Munich Philharmonic do Bruckner's Fourth live (Celibidache's notorious 80-minute Bruckner Fourth!), was that he had somehow mesmerized the players in the orchestra so that they were all pulling in the same interpretive direction at once. IOW, they knew the goals of the interpretation and how their individual contributions fit in and contributed to the overall success and emotional effect of the performance. I've never had this sensation so overwhelmingly in any other live performance I've attended. I also remember Celibidache's reported comments during the rehearsals at Davies Hall for this performance: at the end of the rehearsal, he told the players to look around the hall and then commented, "Anyone who would build a hall like this doesn't care very much about music!" ;-)
I think you might like this one, it's Bruckner's piano music. The adapted Adagio from Symphony 7 is great and the other pieces are interesting in a Brucknerish way:
. . . such as the Mahler arrangement of the Third Symphony for two pianos:
Of course, in my wife's case, she refuses even to read though the piano four-hand arrangements of the Bruckner symphonies. Maybe she's been traumatized by the "blaring brass". ;-)
I'm thus reduced to bombing my way through the solo piano arrangements of the symphonies (such as Stradal's of the Eighth), but the texture is often too thick to fit everything into just ten fingers!
We saw him do Prokofiev's 3rd in Cincinnati in the Spring. They also did Tchaikovsky's 6th that night. I could not believe they did the symphony first. I did not want to hear anything (I usually don't) after that draining piece of music. Well, after intermission, they hauled out the piano and clamped a camera on the end of it; I also notice one over the keyboard. And so while I was tring to listen to the concerto, they had his mug shown on a screen behind the orchestra, alternating with pictures of his hands along the keyboard. It all made me sick. I'll be Dang Dang If I go see this jaybird play anything again.
I think part of the problem is in recent time, some musicians have tended to sell themselves with excessive body motions and facial expressions..... In most cases (but not all), to make up for deficiencies in their playing.
And to some degree, the histrionics have impressed the audiences...... Lang Lang, violinist Maxim Vengerov, and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Simon Rattle, and Gustavo Dudamel maybe the most effective in this regard.
The Principal Viloa in the LA Phil is destined for back problems. My view is, if you can't hear it, don't do it!
Do you mean this lady?
We saw her play in Mozart sinf concertante with Gupta of the violins. This was with the CYMO Youth Orchestra. She moved around a LOT.
It seems to have worked well for Mahler, too.
/
From San Francisco Chronicle review: "It is clear that Lang Lang can play the piano any way he wants to. So why does he want to play like THAT?"
.... or a lack of it.
/
That's hilarious!! Worthy of GBS. Was it Kosman that wrote that?
And it was a paraphrase from memory. Will try to post a link. Reminds me of 'Wagner's music is better than it sounds.' Edit: Link didn't go through, Google Kosman Lang Lang batters the piano.
Edits: 07/07/12
The Gay Count Dracula
I don't. Even though I find him interesting, and not incidentally, a lot more interesting than Lang Lang. Who else could have brought together the low-brow mistrust of European high culture (portrayed by the inevitable harpsichord scene in every Dracula movie) with the popular belief that classical music is a music for pansies? I don't even think that Liberace lacks virility in the way that Lang Lang does. While L.L. apes noble sentiments in a manner that is truly repulsive, Liberace caricatures society's insecurities and delivers a performance that, seen properly, really is an art form.
Edits: 07/06/12
The sad part about Liberace is I thought he was a genuine talent, but his catching the "showman" niche stunted any development of him becoming a great pure pianist.
The few times I've heard him play a classical piece straight (no pun..... link), he did have a degree of dynamic control and explosiveness that IMO escapes many "serious" pianists. I think had his career progressed as merely a concert pianist, he could have been up there amongst the greats.
Unlike Lang Lang, Liberace never went through bodily or facial contortions while playing...... The distraction was the extreme showmanship, gaudy costumes, and bastardized versions of the classics overshadowing the talent.
Link is Chopin's A-Flat Major Polonaise. The only thing that gives away that it's Liberace is the improvisation near the end. (Although Horowitz and Earl Wild did the same sort of thing. I personally prefer Liberace's "Polonaise" over Lang's and some of the noted greats.... Argerich and Kissin amongst them.) Note the audio sounds as if it originated from noisy vinyl..... Nothing's perfect.
.
did fundraisng concerts with many orchs, incl SF Sym. One of his best bits was getting upset with the Concert Master, escorting them offstage, gun shot, and he came back out alone to continue...
LIBERTY ONCE LOST,
IS LOST FOREVER
-JOHN ADAMS
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